Platform Product Operations Lead - Payward Services

As a Platform Product Operations Lead at Payward Services (the parent company of Kraken), you own the operational running of US regulated entities and drive the special projects and platform-growth initiatives that move the Payward Services business forward. You are a jack-of-all-trades operator who combines consulting-level rigor with hands-on operating experience, comfortable diving deep into product flows, regulatory filings, and the mechanics of launching B2B2C businesses in regulated markets.

What you'll do

• Own platform product operations and launch readiness for B2B2C products including KYC/KYB, lending, and unified APIs. Gate go-lives against regulatory and operational requirements, and build the operations that let products ship fast and scale.
• Drive cross-functional execution on roadmap milestones, compliance deliverables, and infrastructure work across Product, Engineering, Legal, Compliance, Finance, and external partners.
• Run day-to-day operations for US regulated entities, including licensing maintenance, operational risk and incident management, outsourcing and intra-group coordination, audit and examination readiness, and Board/executive reporting. You act as the functional operating lead for these entities.
• Lead the operational work behind US licensing workstreams for state money transmitter licenses (including NMLS filings) and state lending licenses, partnering with Legal and Compliance to turn regulatory requirements into governance processes, controls, documentation, and the evidence examiners expect.
• Serve as the operational counterpart to regulators and examiners, handling information requests, supervisory queries, incident notifications, and closing out follow-up actions.
• Represent the operational side of US regulated entities in board, regulatory, and executive discussions, defining core metrics, improving systems, and elevating how the company builds and scales regulated B2B products.

What you bring

• 8–12 years of experience with roots in strategy consulting (MBB, Big 4 strategy, or boutique) and a proven track record of operational execution in-house.
• Time spent operating inside a scaling fintech, bank, or crypto firm in roles such as special projects, chief of staff, operations strategy, business/product operations, or operations lead, with a track record of taking on scope well beyond your title.
• Experience running or working on a B2B or B2B2C business in tech, ideally including running or supporting platform teams that manage shared infrastructure, APIs, and internal-client or partner models.
• The ability to dive into product mechanics: comfortable sitting with Product and Engineering and understanding how flows work, where they break, and what it takes to launch in a regulated market.
• Working familiarity with the US regulated financial landscape and a genuine understanding of what supervision and examination actually involve. You can map regulation to business processes without a translator.
• Experience setting up or working with compliance programs, including KYC/KYB onboarding programs.
• A track record of running complex cross-functional programs with no formal authority and of picking up work outside your job description because it needed doing.
• The ability to apply rigorous governance and control standards while remaining pragmatic about process, distinguishing between controls that genuinely protect the business and procedures that add friction without corresponding value.
• Excellent communication skills across regulators, boards, engineers, and commercial partners.
• Comfort with ambiguity, a broad remit, and a title that means ownership rather than headcount. You measure yourself by what you ship and land.

Nice to have

• Hands-on experience supporting or leading a regulatory-change program end to end.
• Crypto or digital-assets experience, in industry or through regulated product launches, including familiarity with crypto-native operations such as treasury and custody.
• Background as a founder, GM, or early operations hire at a fintech or crypto startup.

About Payward

Payward is the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services, and CF Benchmarks. Over the last 15 years, Payward has built one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, designed to advance an open, global financial system. Payward Services is an enterprise infrastructure platform that enables companies to seamlessly integrate trading, payments, funding, and digital asset services through a single unified system, providing coordinated liquidity, custody, compliance, risk management, and settlement capabilities for fintechs, banks, brokerages, and payment providers.